Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire Read Online Free Page B

anything as Blair stood a dozen paces away, breathing shallowly through her mouth. He continued on, as emotionless and machinelike as any Terminator, checking each broken body before moving on to the next.
    He was so silent and straightforwardly determined in his quest, in fact, that he had unhooked his entrenching tool from his pack and started digging before Blair even realized that he’d found his brother.
    Gingerly, feeling like she was setting off across a minefield, she walked over to him.
    “May I help?” she asked.
    “No,” he said flatly, not looking at her.
    For a minute Blair watched him jabbing the tool into the loose sand and throwing it to the side, wondering if she should just take him at his word and go wait in the Blackhawk. Then, moving a few feet away from him, she started to dig.
    She half expected him to order her away. But he didn’t. Maybe he realized that she’d been Caleb’s friend, too, and deserved the chance to help him to his final rest.
    Maybe he just didn’t consider her worth the trouble of yelling at.
    The sun was dipping close to the western mountains by the time they finished the grave. Again, Blair expected Barnes to order her away as he picked up his brother’s body and laid it gently in the hole. But again, he simply ignored her as she stood quietly by. He spoke over the grave for a few minutes, his voice too low for Blair to catch more than a few words of the farewell. Then, straightening up, he threw his brother a final salute. Blair did the same, holding the salute for probably half a minute until Barnes finally lowered his arm to his side and again picked up his entrenching tool.
    Ten minutes later, it was done. While Blair waited by the grave, Barnes constructed a cross out of his brother’s rifle and a slightly warped Terminator leg strut. He dug the cross into the sand, and for another minute stood gazing at the grave and the marker. He took a deep breath, and for the first time in probably an hour he looked at Blair.
    “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    “All right,” Blair said, her mind flicking to the hundreds of bodies still lying out beneath the open sky. But there was no way she and Barnes could deal with so many. All she could do was put them out of her mind as best she could. “Before we go, I’d like to check out something I spotted on our way in.”
    He eyed her suspiciously. “What was it?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”
    He glowered, but gave a reluctant nod. “Where?”
    Blair turned around, mentally superimposing the image from the sky on top of the landscape stretched out in front of her.
    “About a hundred meters that way,” she said, pointing northwest. “You want me to go and get the helo?”
    With a snort, he strode past her and headed off in the direction she’d indicated.
    Blair grimaced. Easy for him to say. He hadn’t gotten shot during her attempt to free Marcus from the prison Connor had put him in.
    Fortunately, the wound hadn’t been as serious as she’d first thought. It had probably been a ricochet, and though it had hurt like hell at the time and half paralyzed her leg, it had done a good job of healing in the week and a half since then.
    It still wasn’t completely well, though, and too much exertion was bad for it. Barnes probably knew that.
    And he obviously didn’t care.
    With a sigh, Blair hurried to catch up to him.
    The mysterious hump Blair had seen had been reasonably visible from the air. From the ground, with the western sun exaggerating every shadow, it was even more obvious.
    It wasn’t a root that had been forced up out of the ground. Instead, it was a root-sized cable.
    “Coaxial type,” she commented, pointing to the central core and surrounding shielding where Barnes had sliced through it with his trench knife. “Outer shielding pretty sturdy.”
    “Okay,” Barnes said, restlessly turning his knife over and over in his hand. “So?”
    “So it was